I decided to start this for those who wish to discuss it. Give them a place to vent thier thoughts, since it doesn't really have relativity to the other forums.

Personally, I feel we need to sink a lot of effort in Biodiesel after reading the off-topics posts on another thread. We depend greatly on diesel products for our major transportation needs. If it is easy to use diesel fuel in replace of regular diesel, then if someone had the money to invest in a major refinery, and marketing, they would be rich beyond Bill Gates. You could sell to every municipality and transportation service. That would change the oil dependancy of the world. With less pollutants and usable by-products of producing the fuel ... it sounds too good to be true. It would create more jobs than will be lost by GM going under. I saw the History channel Modern Marvels on future of vehicles and the biodiesel seems great for those who like diesel, hydrogen seems great for those who like an alternative to even the more organic refreshable oils. Either way an electic hybrid supplement would be helpful and with improvements on regenerative braking and possible solar sources of power, it will have less occurances of negative regeneration. If someone could take filtered used oil from restaurants to power a vehicle, the future is rather bright. I also saw at least one or two Insights on there, and I am rather sure the woman said hers was running on hydrogen in some way. I didn't know the conversion was so simple to run both fuels.

I think the one guy saying that cars may have a source of people power for stop and go traffic needs is a little ... .

I am feeling a little flaklempt ... Talk amongst yourselves

 

Check out the 330 MPG Diesel hybrid 2-seater motorcycle class (but F1 safety design) that uses a little 12hp CARB certified diesel and a 25hp electric motor for 0–60 mph in 11 seconds... and less than $20k http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006...p_introdu.html



...and I thought the Prius looked like a spaceship!

 

Two words. Pipe dream.

I can't imagine them getting all the saftey features and other amenities in it and not at least adding 1/4 to the weight of it. Also, I'm not sure how stable a trike would be at 60mph. I'm thinking just adding a front license plate is going to hurt its CD because its so low any additions to it would have more of an effect than on a more conventional vehicle.

I'm thinking this would be great if there were no regulations about building cars and you could do what you want, but to be able to legaly drive it on America's roads I think they will have to make many compromises. One example would be the rear license plate. Do you see a spot for it? How about rear brake lights and the third brake light? Also, no side mirrors or rear window. MEGA blindspots. now you could say "replace some of it with glass" But I think you would find glass woud add a lot of weight to the vehicle.

Maybe by having it classified as a motor cycle they can get around most of the problems getting it registered, but to me it seams like a death trap.

 

Yes, it would, but the designer came on the page and commented that the rendering does not include it, but it's been planned: "The plate is recessed with a flush mount Lexan cover (like an aircraft landing light)."

 

The only bio-diesel plan that has a chance is the one where algae is used. Not soybean, not corn, not used vegetable oils from restaurants, nope... just the green muck that you see in ponds. There is a study out that addresses what it would take to convert the U.S. over to bio-diesel and it's a compelling argument and one that I can see succeeding in the near future.

see the attached link:

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

also, feel free to contact the author:

Michael Briggs 603-862-2828;
email msbriggs@unh.edu

 

Thanks livvie, a very interesting read. I would be interested in an HCCI biodiesel Hybrid if/when they become available. It would be great if they came out at current fuel prices, but then once they have paid for themselves, drop the price down to a reasonable profit margin and stay there, and at worse they drop the prices and the gov't takes the surplus of the difference to get us out of debt ... usa ... out of debt ... i better stop dreaming.

 

The irony in all this is typical U.S. mentality. There needs to be more funding for the above study. Yet, do you think the u.s government is interested? Nope, guess who is funding Michael's project? The Chinese and the Australian.